EP60: Hear how Ryan Hoover built Product Hunt in 4 days

This week’s guest is Ryan Hoover. We’ve been online friends for a few years now. Back in 2013, Ryan invited me to join a new site he’d created called ProductHunt.com. In the last 3 weeks, it’s exploded. He was interviewed on Fox News, he was interviewed on This Week in Startups, AND he just announced that he’s joined YCombinator.

I actually recorded this episode on January 24, 2014 (5 months ago) – before Product Hunt got huge. I thought it would be interesting to revisit that conversation: to hear from the Ryan Hoover that hadn’t yet achieved all this recent success.

Once you hear it, you’ll understand why Ryan’s done so well: he built an audience (by blogging, and creating Startup Edition), and then focused on creating something valuable for that community.

Notable quotes

“I’ve always been entrepreneurial: as a child I created little joke books, and operated gum ball machines.” – Ryan Hoover

“I didn’t know what a Product Manager was 6 months before I became one.” – Ryan Hoover

Show notes

Note from Justin

I need your help. People don’t know the show is back, releasing new episodes every Thursday. I took a break back in October, and people think the show is still offline. If you could go to iTunes leave a nice review that would be superb.

Also: if you’re listening on Stitcher, please leave a review on there!